"The course was organised as the first popularising event for the ERC project “Jews and Christians in the East: Strategies of Interaction between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean”; a European Research Council project based at the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, and carried out in cooperation with the Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at CEU. The principal investigator of the project is Alexandra Cuffel, Professor of Jewish Studies at Ruhr University Bochum. During the five-year duration of the project, we plan four such summer schools, which we deem to be one of the most powerful means for distributing the new knowledge gained through our research. Thanks to the generous grant received from the EAJS, we could offer fellowships and support to students coming from all over the world (India, the Caucasus, Israel, Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia and throughout Europe), who might not have been able to participate otherwise. These students were exposed to the results of the latest research into the history and the culture of the Jewish populations of the East and into their contacts and interaction with their Christian neighbours. In exchange, the students contributed to our subjects with their own, often ground-breaking, research. Our experience is that this construction is a powerful means not only for disseminating new knowledge in this field but also for gaining it."